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Matt Hawes
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 16502
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| Posted: 22 June 2011 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | 1
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Claremont (and the article) touts the sales figures for "X-Men" #1 (1990) and cites the Guiness Book of World Record entry, and the way Claremont talks in this interview, it's like he really believed each copy sold was to an individual person:
"...Jim and I did our story with #1, and it blew the lid off of things and created a World Record..."
"...The fantasy in ’90 and ’91 was ‘If we could launch with #1 at sales of 8.5 million, wouldn’t it be cool if we could come back with #12 in a year, and were still doing 800,000 or maybe a million? If we hit this high mark and didn’t drop back to the base number, and used it as a way to draw new readers in and expand the base, to bring it to a vaster cross-section of the reading populace….’ That was the hope and ambition. It didn’t quite work that way, and so it collapsed..."
It collapsed because there wasn't really 8.5 million individuals who bought that first issue: There was five different covers, with speculators and others buying several copies of each of those covers. There really wasn't that many new readers as much as long-term fans mixed with those speculators who had entered the market during that period. Claremont was right in that he was living in a fantasy, as was Marvel, in not realizing the reality of what was going on. It always frustrated me, a lowly comics fan, who could see even then what was going on, and where it would eventually lead, and yet the publishers and much of the talent producing the comics could not see what was really happening.
At least Claremont seems to be thinking more clearly these days:
"... When I came back in ’98 as Editorial Director, it was a shithole. The numbers were falling, every issue. You might have an issue that would hold on a little bit; I know that the eight or nine issues I did in 2000 managed to hold their own. We stopped a measure of a fall, but then after that? It’s depressing…The advantages of my being a mature contributor is that I remember that a book that only sold 75,000 copies got you cancelled without a second thought.
“X-Men is doing in the mid-60s. That’s Uncanny. X-Men Forever’s last issue sold twelve, and maybe not even that. That doesn’t even cover the cost of printing. That’s obscene, and what it says is that we’re clearly not offering work that a significant number of readers (potential or otherwise) are willing to find.”
"...It’s only offered to comic book specialty stores. In the old days, a third of X-Men’s monthly sales were newsstand. The rule of thumb when I was writing Uncanny, was that we made our nut—the cost of the creative freelancers, putting the book together, and printing it—were paid for by the newsstand sales. We were selling 125,000 copies of an issue, which meant all of the direct market sales were gravy. Once they killed the newsstand, that all went away..."
Edited by Matt Hawes on 22 June 2011 at 6:48pm
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Jason Larouse
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 May 2011
Posts: 515
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| Posted: 22 June 2011 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | 2
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“The second frustration, which is more primal, is that you ask yourself ‘Is this because it’s not there? Because I’m of a different generation, I don’t see the mesh of the script and visual in a way that I did when I was twenty, which is a whole other level of realization and insight, or non-insight. There’s no real answer for it. The kinds of prose books that I loved ten years ago, I look at now and go ‘Ewww’. I looked through Neil’s stuff, Jack’s stuff, John’s stuff (Senior or Junior), and I see what I love. I look at modern presentation and the magic isn’t there.
“It becomes, then, an honest question that one has to ask: ‘Is it me or the medium? Have I changed? Have they changed? Have we both changed and drifted apart? Is this a flaw, or do you just move on?’
I feel this way when I read modern comics too :\
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Martin Redmond
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 June 2006
Posts: 3882
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| Posted: 22 June 2011 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | 3
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That's because they're movie scripts without any movement or background music to emphasise the mood. If they were cartoons with voice actors giving feeling to the dialogue and there was some sort of movement happening every panel, they wouldn't be so boring. Try watching most tv shows or cartoons with the sound off and see how fast you're bored. Comics need to compensate for all of those lacunas. Sometimes, I might read a minimalist comic with some tension building panel and if I'm attentive, I'll think "this would be good if I were forced to stare at this scene for 10 seconds while there's a background music to build-up anticipation, but it's simply not happening in a comic book so that scene just falls flat. /end rant
Edited by Martin Redmond on 22 June 2011 at 10:02pm
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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17699
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| Posted: 23 June 2011 at 7:21am | IP Logged | 4
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Try watching most tv shows or cartoons with the sound off and see how fast you're bored. Comics need to compensate for all of those lacunas.--- Martin, thanks for introducing me to a new (for me) word!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 23 June 2011 at 9:15am | IP Logged | 5
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Try watching most tv shows or cartoons with the sound off and see how fast you're bored.•• That would be using the product incorrectly, tho, wouldn't it? I think of the story one of my editors told, of an EiC coming in to his office to complain about a coloring job, and TURNING OFF THE LIGHTS so the room was dark, as he declared, dead serious, "See! You can't see anything!"
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Martin Redmond
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Joined: 27 June 2006
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| Posted: 23 June 2011 at 9:39am | IP Logged | 6
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I hope I don't sound that crazy. I meant, alot of comics I read feel like they're a good draft for something else. But not yours, obviously.
Edited by Martin Redmond on 23 June 2011 at 9:40am
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Kip Lewis
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Joined: 01 March 2011
Posts: 2880
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| Posted: 23 June 2011 at 9:49am | IP Logged | 7
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I have often said, "good captioning is to comics, what a good
soundtrack is to a movie." Which I found funny, when the industry started trying to write
comics like movies; so, what did they do? They killed the
"soundtrack".
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David Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 3093
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| Posted: 23 June 2011 at 11:33am | IP Logged | 8
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I once watched FRIENDS with the sound off, and found the actors so expressive it played like a silent movie.
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3353
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| Posted: 23 June 2011 at 11:38am | IP Logged | 9
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JB wrote:
| TURNING OFF THE LIGHTS so the room was dark, as he declared, dead serious, "See! You can't see anything!" |
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Man, you haven't READ a comic until you read it in the dark.
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
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| Posted: 23 June 2011 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | 10
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TURNING OFF THE LIGHTS so the room was dark, as he declared, dead
serious, "See! You can't see anything!"***
...Then he grabbed a handful of tacks and said: "look, some of these tacks
got the heads on the wrong end!"
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
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| Posted: 23 June 2011 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | 11
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I once watched FRIENDS with the sound off, and found the actors so expressive it played like a silent movie.
****
Not so off mark to analogize a silent movie to a comicbook. Narrative & dialogue in the latter serve a similar function as intertitles in the former.
Edited by Michael Penn on 23 June 2011 at 3:17pm
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 23 June 2011 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | 12
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I tell new and wannabe artists that their job is to make the writer redundant. To included all the information needed, clearly and concisely, so that no words are necessary.There are certain things that simply cannot be shown with just a picture, of course. As I once said on a panel, it is impossible to DRAW 4:30 in the afternoon.* Of course, then I remembered I was sitting next to Will Eisner, and noted that HE could probably draw 4:30 in the afternoon! _____ * Good comicbook illustration is much a like game of Pictionary, in that it is best when the ideas can be expressed without resorting to mechanical contrivances, like putting a clock in the picture! I once commented to a writer friend that it was impossible to draw 4:30 in the afternoon, and with a tone of incredible boredom (These STUPID artists, I could almost hear him thinking) he said "Show kids heading home from school." "What if school let out early that day?" I asked. "Or late? What if they're on a field trip? What if the scene is in the middle of the Sahara?" (I also have no idea what schools he was thinking of, since I don't know ANY kids who get out that late these days!)
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